Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday December 08, 2012 @01:36PM
from the there-oughta-be-a-law dept.

hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting piece on how money in politics is having a deleterious effect on U.S. innovation. From the article: 'Somehow, it seems that every time that [Mickey Mouse] is about to enter the public domain, Congress has passed a bill to extend the length of copyright. Congress has paid no heed to research or calls for reform; the only thing that matters to determining the appropriate length of copyright is how old Mickey is. Rather than create an incentive to innovate and develop new characters, the present system has created the perverse situation where it makes more sense for Big Content to make campaign contributions to extend protection for their old work.if you were in any doubt how deep inside the political system the system of contributions have allowed incumbents to insert their hands, take a look at what happened when the Republican Study Committee released a paper pointing out some of the problems with current copyright regime. The debate was stifled within 24 hours. And just for good measure, Rep Marsha Blackburn, whose district abuts Nashville and who received more money from the music industry than any other Republican congressional candidate, apparently had the author of the study, Derek Khanna, fired. Sure, debate around policy is important, but it's clearly not as important as raising campaign funds.'"

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln

Rep Marsha Blackburn, whose district abuts Nashville and who received more money from the music industry than any other Republican congressional candidate, apparently had the author of the study, Derek Khanna, fired.

Sounds like she is representing the people she is supposed to represent. If you want a candidate who supports your industry, and your industry has a geographical central location like Silicon Valley, Nashville, Hollywood, or any number of other examples, it makes sense to support the candidate

47 million on food stamps, average welfare spending per poor household is HIGHER than median income.

The tragedy isn't that 47 million people are getting food stamps, the tragedy is that a person can be holding down three part time jobs paying *more* than minimum wage, and still need food stamps. Corporations are paying their employees starvation wages, working their salaried employees for hundreds of mandatory unpaid overtime hours every year, and paying almost no taxes to boot. Our system isn't fostering corruption, it is the embodiment of it!

is that a person can be holding down three part time jobs paying *more* than minimum wage, and still need food stamps

Funny that I made the same statement just after the last election, and was modded a troll for it. This isn't really the end-be-all fault of corporations though, this is the end-be-all fault of over government regulations. Want to see where it's similar? Try Japan and Europe. Massive regulations, people entrenched, everyone under 35 has part-time jobs, or are going through temp agencies and working 3 of them, and still not making ends meet.

Want to see where it's similar? Try Japan and Europe. Massive regulations, people entrenched, everyone under 35 has part-time jobs, or are going through temp agencies and working 3 of them, and still not making ends meet.

This is simply not true here in Japan.Even McDonald's here pays over $11-12/hr (which is still too low) and the majority of the work force are full-time, life-long, benefit-receiving employees.Where did you do your in-depth research for this post?

I live in the UK and you're talking bollocks, unemployment is not exceptional, we have nothing like the poverty that the US has. We have far better minimum wages which combat poverty. there is no such thing as food stamps here. And of course the national health service is free to all so if you get sick it is not a problem financially (except for the time off work for some people).

And the Japanese guy disagrees too I see.

I don't earn great wages and I live in London and I still have plenty of spending money, food is not a concern.

I live in Holland. We have just about the lowest unemployment rate of the EU. We don't have food stamps but we do have 'food banks;' places where poor people can get food for free or for a very small fee. I find it a crying shame that one of the richest and most 'social' countries in the world has these things. Bit our successive governments are rapidly breaking down our society by cutting spending on education, research and innovation, green technology (we are the dirtiest country in Europe and we do even

Oh and another thing, you talk of too much regulation but the whole reason we're in a multi-year downturn is because the financial markets were not properly regulated and the bankers fucked the economy.

Except that real unemployment figures are either the same as the US or lower in most of Europe. In Germany and Scandinavia, where "regulations" and the welfare state are probably stronger than nearly anywhere else in the world, unemployment is *far* lower than in the US.

And these people have higher wages, work less, and receive more government services. Barely making ends meet in Europe doesn't mean you're literally on the edge of survival like it does in the US. It means you just don't have any money to spend.

I have no idea what facts you're using to make your judgments, but it definitely doesn't correspond to reality.

Its not Godwin to point out that if you cant afford a child in the current environment, you shouldn't have one. It is basic pragmatism and the sign of an Intelligent Being.

It is, however, also pragmatic to consider the consequences of allowing this state of affairs to persist. Society needs replacements for expiring members, and while it's possible to support it through immigration, the scale required will cause a shift in culture and demographics and thus social unrest, especially since the newcomers will likely find their dream of a better life running headfirst into the brutal reality of poverty that caused the problem in the first place. Furthermore, is it really such a good idea to have massive amounts of people who live in misery, have nothing to tie them down, and can only realistically improve their situation through winning a lottery or staking a revolution?

47 million on food stamps, average welfare spending per poor household is HIGHER than median income

[Citation needed]
That seems unlikely, as median income is (so far) above the poverty line (42K, I think vs 14-18K poverty line, depending on number of children). I doubt that the welfare offered exceeds the poverty line by a factor of two, which is what you seem to be claiming. It is even less likely that the average welfare per household did.

I just read a story about an illegal immigrant getting a free kidney transplant

[Citation needed]
How would an illegal immigrant have insurance?

If you are in America and not getting money for nothing you are a moron now

Lose your job, go below the poverty line and you could get money for nothing too! You wouldn't like it thought.

Welfare spending in 2012 has exceeded $1 Trillion.

The economy had collapsed recently and unemployment is high. There are more people needing welfare than in other years (say, before the last implosion). The number of $ means nothing without considering current unemployment rates, overall inflation, etc.

They wouldn't need it, provided their life was in imminent danger. Hospitals are not allowed to turn away people with life-threatening conditions even if they can't pay, so the cost gets spread around to all other patients. And the situation is actually even worse than it seems since the hospital will likely refuse treatment when it would still be relatively cheap to correct in the hopes that some other hospital will be the one stuck with the patient when their condition eventually becomes life-threatening. The net effect is that everyone gets hit with higher costs, but the situation can't be corrected except perhaps by sweeping legislation since any hospital that "gave away" preventative treatments would end up paying even more since they're unlikely to be the primary beneficiary of the reduction in un-refusable patients. The universal insurance mandatory may begin to correct this situation, though we'll have to see how it actually plays out, it could just be that the insurance companies pocket all the gains.

Not surprising at all. Consider Medicaid - if a family of four had to actually pay out of pocket for Medicaid level insurance it would easily cost $20,000 / year. On top of food stamps and other inputs, you can get to 40K pretty fast.

Now, the flip side of this is that most taxpayers get some form of subsidy as well. It can be hidden, but it's there - employer contribution to health care, mortgage deductions, child deductions, indirect and direct subsidies to various industries (e.g., energy, agriculture

getting serious, it is really sad what is happening with society, we have come to a stage where pretty much everything we do is getting richer the rich, we see that a lot here in México, every new law is pushing for lower salaries and less benefits, and from some years ago, gov is pushing to convert universities into technicall schools so we can have even more cheap workers.

Sad but true. The USA has more wealth inequality than it had in the last 75 years (or more) , mostly thanks to the GOP's plan to destroy the middle class these past 30+ years. Social mobility is getting to be impossible and the only way people can go is down. It's really fucking bleak and there's no end in sight.

The rich will flee the country with as much ill-gotten wealth as they can take with them. They don't care if the USA falls apart because they have stashes in tax shelters around the world so they can just move when things get bad. The rest of us will be stuck in the shithole they created.

You make a good point. My theory is the 1% don't realize if they pauperize everyone they'll end up poor themselves. I don't know how it was in other times, but today it's no problem to be both rich and ignorant.

A poster elsewhere in this thread mentioned personal debt-- negative net worth. This is the definition of slavery, and some among the 1% probably assume they'll make money from usury. Fie.

That's only true in the short run. In the long run, the inefficiency resulting from the distortion of economic incentives is hindering GDP growth, which ultimately reduces the income of rich and poor alike. The corruption is not only stealing from the poor, middle class, and upper middle class -- it is also stealing from the rich in the long run -- to line the pockets of today's benefactors of corruption. They are stealing even from their own future met

Except those examples of yours had the right ideas, at the right place, at the right time, and had the means to make it a reality. There's a luck factor involved. If they were too early or too late they would have failed and we would have never heard of them.

lots of people have gone from almost nothing to living very comfortably

you're a moron if you think that just because you're not a CEO you're nothing. my wedding photographer has a million dollar house in one of the best school districts in NJ. he runs a small business and is not a billionaire. is he a failure?

Don't put words in my mouth. Your wedding photographer may not be a failure, but he isn't a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates either. The point I was trying to make is to become super-rich with a new idea you have to have a "perfect storm" of conditions otherwise the likelihood for failure is much greater than the chance of success. How many people tried to create something like Facebook before Zuckerberg did? There were probably some who had a similar idea, but since they failed we have no idea who they are. (had t

Gates was a 'poor' Harvard student son of a prominant lawyer. His mom was a director of the United way and his grand dad was a bank president. So yeah, (Gucci) rags to riches there. Perhaps not 'rich' but certainly well off.

Similar for Zuckerberg.

Jobs was indeed from what most would consider an average middle class family.

While blind luck and connections without work wouldn't have gotten them where they are today, work without blind luck and connections wouldn't have done it for them either.

Just a little Econ101: salaries rise, and I don't just mean nominally through inflating a currency, when the productive capacity of an employee rises.

"For decades, productivity and compensation rose in tandem. Their bond was the basis of the social compact between the economy and the public: If you work harder and better, you and your family will be better off. But in the past few decades, and especially during the past 10 years or so, the lines have diverged. This is slippage No. 1: Productivity is rising handsomely, but compensation of workers isn’t keeping up."

Individuals who find innovative ways to use these new technologies can become very wealthy.

Are you sure? The article seems to be give specific examples of how established industries are using the US system to stifle new companies that are being innovative and more efficient.
Now which theory agrees more with class-mobility decreasing rather than increasing. Class mobility is probably the greatest indication of how much importance a society is placing on talent and effort instead of inherited positions and wealth.

There is a simple truism: it takes money to make money. It also takes money to lobby congress, and old-money has more to spend on lobbyists to keep money out of the hands of the proletariat, than working stiffs have to lobby for a fair economy.

I'm not sure it's corruption. It's more like taking advantage of a system that is optimized for helping the Haves get more.

That's the textbook definition of corruption. Using your public position for personal gain.

Politicians should be like Nascar drivers and be required by law to wear a vest that has patches of all the corporations (and any individuals that donate more than a set amount per year) that own their votes. The size of the patch directly relating to the amount of ownership. When the amount of ownership gets above 50% that politician can no longer run for public office as it is obvious that he no longer represents his constituency.

you gotta be living in a stable european country, even Greece and Spain have a LOT of trouble with corruption getting them into a lot of economic problems, and that it pretty much the norm on third world countries, I'm sure there are a few corruption scales you can check online to support this.

one of the most popular halloween costumes this year was from Jake and the Neverland Pirates, a Peter Pan spin off that Disney has in its 3rd season nowdisney jr has lots of new characters like Oso, Handy Manny, Little Einsteins and others

and the popularity of Mickey and its copyright protection is what fueled the children's animation revolution of the last 20 some yearslion kingshrekall the Pixar moviesand at least a dozen other movies

I don't understand your reasoning here. Are you saying that because Disney has created more characters than Mickey Mouse, it's fine that copyright protection be extended ad infinitum? Could you elaborate a bit on your argument please, as I'm sure there is at small step inbetween premise and conclusion that I am missing.

I think the fear that one day Mickey Mouse WILL enter the public domain is spurring that revolution. Imagine how much more would exist if it wasn't renewed. THey'd need a steady stream of new characters

i never said shrek was disney. the point is even with mickey protected by copyright there is still lots of new animation coming out and people thinking up new stories

and shakespeare copied as well. everyone does. nothing bad about it, you just have to make your story unique to make it something new. like Paramount did with DS9 when they used Babylon 5 as inspiration

with amazon making it easy to self publish i decided to try my luck with writing. almost finished with my first novella. i got the idea for the story from a meme i saw on Google Plus almost a year ago and used my wife and other people i've met for the characters.

not very hard

how is lack of copyright going to encourage people to make up new content?

There is a WIDE gulf between completely lack of copyright,and the never-ending copyright terms that we have in the USA today. (And don't tell me that copyrights are finite, because they DO get extended every time things are about to start to enter the public domain again.)

so what if copyrights go to infinity? there is an almost never ending pool of new ideas to work on

Fifty Shades of Grey may have gotten a lot of hype a few months ago but there lots of other romance novels in the kindle store. people are always making up cool ideas for art, creating the product and selling it

Disney is not the only ones making cartoons. In fact most of disney's revenue is from sports these days. They own espn

There was shrek that was based on a kids bookMaracascarIce agePixar has made some excellent stuff like toy story and monsters that Disney only distributedMegamind was a superman ripoff but superheroes in general are an old ideaDespicable me

But if you want to talk DisneySpecial agent osoHandy mannyChuggington which is inspired by Thomas the tank engineThe older kid crap that Disney has for te

We all know the typical way of presenting news - whenever an (R) does something bad, the party affiliation is right up there, and whenever a (D) does something even more despicable, the party affiliation is omitted and both parties are said to be equally bad. We all know this already. What's interesting about this story is how Blackburn is conspicuously identified an an (R) while Khanna's party affiliation is left blank - even though Khanna is a Republican through and through. An ignorant or negligent observer might conclude that (R) are uniquely and despicably evil while (D) never seem to be attached to anything bad.

this was pointed out during the recent storms (Sandy), and there were several pundits that pointed out that Democrats tended to staff FEMA with professional disaster management folks while the Republicans tended to give those positions out to friends, family and donors. That was why the disaster was as well handled as it was and didn't turn into New Orleans II: The Squeal.

The hard part about this is even though it's demonstrably true (it's easy to trace the reasons for the FEMA appointments under the two administrations) it's so outlandish to think that a man would appoint someone to such an important position for political points that people just don't believe you when you point it out. Even if you've got the evidence (google it) to back it up...

You need to read something besides your kook sites, there have been plenty of complains from the people and officials about how bad sandy is being run. You even have FEMA officials saying Katernia was better run then what is happening now.

when you're a poor ass rust belt or New Orleans worker you live where you're born and you stay there because moving is expensive. I 140 miles for a job and it ended up costing me $2k. You are correct that it's awful that we bail out the rich while ignoring the poor though. Socialize the loses, privatize the profits.

Also, $60 Billion dollars really isn't a lot of money. It just seems like a lot because to one person it is. And I think my main point is that under Democratic leadership most of that $60 bill

A real American would have a half dozen or more homes in different areas, flying from one to the next depending on which one will be rebuilt due to the next natural disaster. Anything else is just one of the 47% asking something for nothing.

I want to say that I'm glad the guy got fired, because he's now become a martyr and a very visible example of how corrupt everything has become.

Unfortunately, I'm just not that optimistic that it will amount to anything constructive. Things will need to get a whole lot worse before people finally start demanding real change.

Actually, the problem is a damn sight worse than that, The only real path to change is through massive wealth redistribution. Taxes are normally used to accomplish this in a socially acceptable fashion. The alternative method uses large quantities of violence... We either need to return to our tax-the-hell-out-of-the-rich method, invent a new alternative, or prepare for the inevitable uprising. In a country with this many guns, its going to be a bloody civil war.

We haven't increased the size of the House of Representatives since the 1930s, but the size of the population has grown 3X since then. The House is supposed to grow (and shrink) with population, yet it has not for nearly 100 years. Are we to believe we have the same level of representation as our great grandparents? Just try to get your Representative on the phone, for example. You might be able to reach him if you have a campaign check, but even that's doubtful these days.

Why is this relevant to the conversation? Because $435 million is a drop in the bucket for most companies, while you'll likely never see your Representative in person, let alone sit down with him/her and voice your opinion. The corporations don't care about who or which party gets elected, just so they remember who cut them the million dollar donation.

But imagine if there were 1000 or more Representatives. Now how easy would it be for corps to buy the Congress? Yes, a lot of the activity would just switch over to the Senate, but both houses have to agree to get legislation passed.

every 10 years there is a census and the results determine which states lose representatives and which states gain them

The size of congress was originally set out to be 1 congressman for as few as 30,000 citizens in the constitution. Now it is closer to 1 congressman for 600,000 or more citizens. Changes were made by congress to keep the size at, or around, 435. See Wikipedia on "History of the United States Congress". Also look up a Frobes article called "The Ultimate Congressional Reforms".

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the state of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

(with the first sentence updated by section 2 of the 14th Amendment [cornell.edu], further updated by the 19th [cornell.edu] and 26th [cornell.edu] Amendments), so, if "the number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand", that allows up to about 10,000 Representatives.

The Constitution doesn't explicitly say how many Representatives there should be per person, it just says that number must be less than or equal to 1/30000 of the population, So "The House is supposed to grow (and shrink) with population, yet it has not for nearly 100 years." is not true and the size of Congress is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.

Blame for Congress not having grown in size can be laid at the feet of Public Law 62-5 [google.com].

Like Bain and the guys that did Hostess in are what's scaring me. Basically guys with money and connections come in, buy a company, and then immediately start raiding the pension funds and paying themselves huge consulting fees from the loans they take out on the business' good name. Then they blame the whole sodding mess on workers making 45k/yr and unions and shut the whole thing down and move it to Mexico where slave labor abounds. br>
These guys are what'll stop innovation. They've got it so good (because they're so damn rich) they don't care about innovation. They become intensely, frighteningly conservative. There what's moved the US so far right these days. They don't want anything to change since they're makin' out like bandits. Hell, they've made progress (as in 'progressive') a bad word...

All that they have to do is revoke all Copyright extensions from the last century, and revert all existing copyright expiration dates to their original dates, subject to the following:

If the copyright holder wants to extend the copyright, there will be a fee of 1 Million USD per year, per work to do so, doubling each year for that work. This dollar amount is a suggestion - but it should be punitive enough to discourage copyright extensions from being made, and keep the list from getting too big.

Although people are often sloppy about the distinction, strictly speaking, that's rent seeking, not corruption. The difference is important. Corruption suggests a criminal offense, and it suggests that the solution is more laws, regulation, and law enforcement. But if you try to fix rent seeking with additional laws, you're just throwing gasoline on the fire, since people will figure out how to use the new laws to their advantage as well.

Rent seeking grows with the size and power of government. The only way

I don't see the point of this article. It seems to be based on the common conflation of copyright, trademarks, and patents.

Copyright terms have no bearing on innovation. It restricts the creation of unauthorized copies and derivative works to the domain of fair use until the term of the copyright expires. These activities are, by their very nature, not innovative. I fail to see how the continual extension of copyright duration impacts innovation in any way.

Back in the 1950s, there was a publisher called Dover, that reprinted out-of-print classics, mostly math and science orphan books that science students had to read an hour at a time on reserve in the university library. (There were professors who owned a rare book that nobody else could get, and could give an entire course by paraphrasing from the book.)

Dover was very successful, because there was a great need for these books that the free market wasn't otherwise filling. I read many of their books. I thought that was pretty innovative.

You couldn't do that today. There are important math and science books that are out of print, and nobody can legally reprint them. You might find them in a big academic library, you might be able to buy them on the rare books market for $200, you might be able to find pirated editions, but you can't legally get them when you need them under these copyright laws.

Similarly with the music industry. There was a record publisher called Nonsuch that used to put out cheap records of public domain or uncopyrighted music. (For most of its existence the Soviet Union didn't believe in copyright, and they had some of the best musicians in the world.)

Probably the most innovative thing you could do with out-of-copyright works is to compile them into an anthology. Under the old copyright laws, you could put together a pretty good poetry collection of works that were only 14 or 28 years old without royalties. Now you can't do that. You'd have to wait until 100 years after the death of the author.

Micky Mouse isn't just copyrighted he's trademarked and trademarks are copyrights on steroids and they don't expire. Disney is one of the worst for enforcing trademarks and probably spend more on lawyers than artists. Micky Mouse and some of the iconic characters are different in that they are in a sense the company much as the Pillsbury Doughboy and Ronald McDonald represent those companies. Without trademark protection another company could create a competing business off the corporate logos and character

Fact1 : Any change will create winners and losers. Be it changes in law, changes in technology, changes in business practices, population, demographics, generally accepted social norms... all changes will create winners and losers.

Fact 2: Most winners will not know they are going to be winners. Most losers can see they are going to be getting the short end of the stick

Fact 3: The losing side will fight tooth and nail to avert it.

When the side that is going to lose is rich and powerful, they employ very powerful techniques to avoid it or postpone it. They will buy out the competitors, engage in collusion, pay the legislators (legally or illegally), spread misinformation, doubt and feat, anything. It is very instructive to read the book by the University of Chicago professor, Dr Raghuram Rajan, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists [amazon.com]

Copyright is one place where we can see the dynamics playing out very clearly and use it as an opportunity to educate the public.

My old econ professor said "in the USA, you call it lobbying. In my country and in others, they call it corruption." We have this culture of just accepting it as part of politics when really it should be strictly outlawed, but obviously the only people who will outlaw it are the cunts being paid to keep it legal. Short of a revolution, we are basically fucked. Not in a catastrophic way, but in a "slow, inexorable slide to the bottom" kind of way.

Money is the key factor there. Perhaps political funding reform is needed? Seems like whoever get the most money and support from those with the most money wins. Political parties were partly designed so Joe Schmo could run for president, but it's a popularity contest where fashion is the dollar.

you get laughed at for being a tin foil hatted conspiracy theorist. The trouble is this stuff is so horrible people can't believe it's happening. It's too far removed from reality. Plus their taught from day one that America is the greatest country on earth, and it's hard to get away from a belief that's been ingrained in you since childhood.

Ever notice how little time Obama spent attacking Romney's policies? The Obama campaign did focus groups and found they couldn't attack Romney on policy because nobody believed he was going to implement them for real. The massive cuts to medicare, social security, tax cuts for the rich, etc. Maybe Romney wasn't really gonna do those things, we'll never know. But either way Obama couldn't convince anyone that he might...

Well said! It's come to the point where you don't even have to be creative to be labeled a conspiracy theorist; all you have to do is cite an article in the New York Times to be considered a loon.

"Huh, yea right, our government has a list of US Civilians to kill without due process; who told you that the Illuminati???""...no, the New York Times did and here are their sources.""Sure sure, tell me when you see Bigfoot next."

The reason they joke is because short of violent revolution there isn't a thing you can do about it. The majority of the media outlets are owned by a handful of rich old insiders that are gonna make damned sure anybody that doesn't "play ball" never gets heard, look up the John Stewart video on Ron Paul where when it looked like people might actually vote for him he became "he who shall not be named" with reporters even listing who came in first, second, FOURTH and fifth, while making sure the name Ron Paul was never spoken. At the end of the clip Stewart shows a reporter who points this out, saying "We are talking about Christie and Palin who aren't even running, and nobody is talking about Paul who is doing good in the polls" to which the anchor got a douchebag smirk and said "Well if you get footage of Palin or Christie let us know, you can just keep the Paul stuff".

You can't fix a corrupt system by following the rules of that system, because they will simply change the rules to insure you can't win. This video on voting says it better than I can [youtube.com] but the simple fact is at the end of the day they own the media, they control what the populace knows and is told, and they write the big fat checks to get the laws they want passed. To quote the late great George Carlin "Know why things never change? Because the owners of this country don't want change! They own you, they own everything worth having in this country and they do NOT want things to get better because its not good for business." and that is the truth.

You can protest in your little free speech zone that is far away from anybody that could be bothered, you can occupy until your hair turns grey and you look like just another one of the growing homeless, it just doesn't matter as the top 1% control the government, the money with both the Fed and Wall Street, and they control the media. Short of a full on violent revolution there is simply nothing you can do, all voting does is replace one puppet with another and the one you kicked out gets a cushy job with a lobbying firm so those you elect can see first hand the cushy position waiting for them if they play ball. Your vote means nothing, and unless your last name is Rothschild or Rockefeller your opinion means less than nothing.

Of course, but that is not the problem.Most civilised countries throw in jail corrupt politicians. In the US bribery is legalised among other nice things such as torture and abductions (extraordinary renditions), and the penalty is zip, nothing at all. In fact the more bribes, ehm contributions you have the bigger the possibility of finding a job in the bribing industry right after leaving Congress.HBR is correct, the US is failing not because of bribery, but because there is no mechanism in the system to thwart that threat.

when you've already got a successful business. There's a reason most of Disney's stuff is retreads of old tales. It's much easier to sell something tried, true tested and familiar. Later on when you're established and you've got a steady flow of cash in payin' the bills you can get to real innovation. The thing people like to ignore is that most big innovation is built on past successes. Just about all the big guys in tech got there because their parents were well enough off to support them while they fucke